Judge Dredd the Megazine, ranked part 16: Don't delay, buy this today!

We're fully inside the Top 20! Like, these stories are getting so good, I actively encourage you to make sure you OWN them! 

18. Blunt by TC Eglington and Boo Cook
(24 episodes across 3 series from Megs 372 to 422)

What was this? The one about colonists on an alien world having to cope with a planet that wants to kill them and/or mutate them AND having to survive an attack by the evil alien Zhind. I guess per the title it’s about the adventures of Blunt, a human/uplift/mutant hybrid character who is more or less the only person on planet Getri-1 who knows how to cope with its deadly ways. Not per the title, it actually more ends up being about the adventures of Ilya, a plucky teen heroine who wants to find her Mum, then her best friend, and in general work out what the hell is going on with this crazy planet.

Book Cook must have a monopoly on all pale pink and green inks.
No one else uses them!

It's one of those stories with a LOT of ideas and characters and cool moments it really, really wants to squeeze into each of its three series. And when Book Cook is one of the creators involved, you just know those details are going to be crammed and rammed into every panel, with barely time to stop and appreciate them.

For my tastes the story never quite settles into any one mode for long enough to get emotionally invested. Book 1 could have been a sort of ‘rescue party gets picked off one-by-one on a hostile planet’, but is scuppered by having threads relating to at least 3 groups of people: the settlers at home, the rescue party, and the people they’re trying to rescue. It’s too much!

And frankly, this template of having two or three groups of characters in different places follows through the next series. I pretty much wanted to be with Blunt and Ilya the whole time (so clearly I did have SOME emotional investment). But, the core idea of the story – a planet whose ecosystem bends all newcomers to its will (with a bit of interaction from a human-made virus to try to counter this) is super interesting, and requires other characters to uncover/explain it all.

Putting the Science into a Science-Fiction comic!
Words by Eglington; Art by Cook

To be fair, Book 3 streamlines the whole thing by confining the action to a single spaceship, for once with all the characters more or less in the same place, and pulls the overall idea together. It does also add new characters in the form of meddling Mega City Judges (who are appropriately paternalistic) and a super-cool robot.

I haven’t even mentioned the psychedelic mushrooms  / magic DNA crystals that give (some) people psychic powers adds another wrinkle of both fun and confusion. The sheer wealth of alien flora and fauna and mutating humans also means we’re assaulted with new character designs every couple of pages. Again, kind of amazing but also hard work! It’s the Boo Cook experience writ large. Eglington meanwhile makes his mark through a weird combo he finds of science, competence, hope, love and nihilism. I can’t imagine this story existing in any other comic than 2000AD/ the Megazine, and isn’t that a glorious thing.

Dreddworld relevance? It’s set on a colony world; some of the characters have come from Mega City 1. It’s more of an Insurrection spin-off than a Judge Dredd spin-off, what with the Zhind and the colony world setting.(And never mind that the Zhind in this story come across quite different to the Zhind in Lawless.)

Writing: 8.5 / 10 I could have done with a bit more simplicity and coherence, but the ideas are wickedly heady, and the characters are fun, too. Book 3 is genuinely great, if still a little more breakneck in both ideas and action than my puny brain can handle.
Art: 8 / 10 No faulting any of the character design or the mad colours or extremely lush details! But sometimes the fun and frenzy sems to win out over the a-b-c panelling…
Impact: 7 / 10 Three series of this weirdness is not to be sniffed at, and of course the partnership (and deadly biology theme) carried on strong with Deathcap and no doubt other projects to come.

Overall score: 23.5 / 30

Has it been reprinted? It has! In a nifty one-volume Hachette Ultimate Collection 133.

 

17. Ordinary by Rob Williams and D’Israeli
(Megs 340-345)

What was this? A creator-owned series that ran in episodes in the Meg but was also published by Image comics as a 3-issue mini. It’s the one that imagines a world where everybody suddenly gets a superpower, except for one guy who remains… ordinary.

What if someone wrote a comic about a balding, beardy
middle-aged white man with glasses? Who would identify with THAT?

Rob Williams has long been a rare 2000AD writer who is really into super heroes, particularly the idea that they are best thought of as just insanely more powerful than anything we really experience, in ways that profoundly upset the world. The idea of giving everyone superpowers is not new, but Williams and D’Israeli do as good a job as anybody at imagining and showing weird and wonderful powers, mostly that reflect something of the personality of the person wielding them.

But really the story isn’t about that. Being mean, it’s kind of a pat ‘bad dad is pushed to try to do better’ story, and as such I respect it rather than loving it. I just don’t buy that the character we see is SUCH a loser/failure that he’d be singled out as not deserving to get any kind of power. I can squint and read the book on a much more metaphorical level, wherein the ‘hero’ feels like such a loser that it‘s as if everyone else has a special ability while he has nothing to show for himself. The plot of the story doesn’t share this reading, as there’s a whole thing about good and evil people trying to find Mr Ordinary to use him for sinister/noble purposes.

By virtue of being a nothing and a nobody, he is in fact, the ultimate somebody.
Words by Williams; Art by D'Israeli

So anyway, we get a chase narrative, some fun visuals and fun superpower ideas, and a big emotional climax that will feel more or less earned depending, I guess, on what you, the reader, bring to the table. I was only mildly moved.

Dreddworld relevance? None.

Writing: 7.5/10
Art: 9/10
Impact: 7/10 I think this is widely held to be the best of the ‘creator-owned’ slot. You mileage may vary on that, of course (mine does!), but it’s inherently a quality comic.

Overall score: 23.5

Has it been reprinted? It has! But by Titan, not Rebellion.

 

16. Armitage by Dave Stone (mostly) and various artists
(12 series stretching from issue 9, through much of Volume 2, a tiny bit of Volume 3, then a few episodes from Megs 212-321, and recently resurfaced as of Meg 460. And a few appearances in specials.)

What was this? A long-running (but I think liked-not-loved) series about gruff Detective Armitage, who is kind of a cross between Inspector Morse and the Sweeney, only set in a version of Brit Cit (rarely acknowledged by other writers) in which everyone in charge is in thrall to a sinister old-boys’ network that starts with the Monarchy and has tentacles reaching everywhere. (Except for the criminal underworld, which has its own structure. And Birmingham, which got nuked at one point. And the bits in the north where Psi Judge Lilian Storm hangs out. But don’t overthink it.)

The Union Jack has so many connotations, many of them hateful...
but damn, it's a cool piece of design.
Art by Sean Phillips

Anyway, basically you get a series of stories in which Armitage, and his trusty rookie/sidekick/senior officer Treasure Steel, investigate and solve murders. While getting in trouble with the senior Judges, who are invariably covering up some wrong-doings by upper-class types. When the strip is playing in this basic arena, it’s pretty great. The procedural beats are fun, Armitage and Steel rub each other up the wrong way in reliably amusing fashion, and some of the mysteries have neat sci-fi-ish-but-not-always solutions. The most recent outing, and the first not by Dave Stone, was also very good at this, which bodes well. I still find it a bit weird how extremely hard Stone goes in on the ‘Posh Brits are all awful and indeed evil’ thing, but I suppose it’s a pretty well-tested formula in 2000AD, and maybe I’m just naïve about the actual world I live in, even after living through the Cameron/Johnson years.

Armitage does NOT get on with people in authority.
Words by Stone; Art by Phillips

That’s a minor complaint. Bigger problems appear when the series gets waylaid by tales of Armitage’s warrior past - in some weird UK Civil War - a whole Judgement-Day thing with demons, and run-ins with crimelord/wheelchair hobgoblin Efil Drago San. Luckily, the series got past most of those side-quests and back into solving murders before too long!

The whole thing is massively elevated by Sean Phillips doing a killer job on the art of the original series, delivering a setting and several characters that just feel super lived-in. A very early Charlie Adlard struggled to live up to this painted style, but improved loads when he could switch to black and white. Later on, John ‘One-Eyed Jack’ Cooper found something of a natural home with the character.

For all that it's a Sci-Fi story, Armitage kind of naturally feels at home in a sort of 
present-day-with-occasional-SF-frills setting

At this point, Armitage is THE premiere ‘last series standing’ from the original Megazine, and he’s a welcome sight. Outside of Mega City One, Brit Cit is, for obvious reasons, the most fun place for a British comic to explore, and Armitage has had the time to make it feel like a place we can just about make sense of. Intriguingly, it’s far nicer than Mega City One, with more personal freedom and Judges who are less bullying - presumably, because they're all preoccupied with shoring up the Old Boys' Network and are happy with the thousand+ year legacy of keeping oiks in their place...

Dreddworld relevance? It’s a spin-off set in the same world, and following the same timeline as Judge Dredd. The characters have met once or twice.

Writing: 7 / 10 This is very much an average of some highish highs and middling lows.
Art: 8.5 / 10 Phillips and Cooper are bringing up the average quite a bit, here.
Impact: 8 / 10 I don’t think Armitage is a character anyone outside of 2000AD circles as heard of, but in the context of the Megazine, he’s a Mount Rushmore if ever there was one. You can't discount how many times there series seemed to have disappeared, only to come back, including crossovers into the world of Dredd. I guess none of his stories are all-time great, but there's something about the character, and indeed his supporting cast, that I keep rooting for them!

Overall score: 23.5 /30

Has it been reprinted? It has! All but the most recent series are in two Mega Collection Volumes, numbers 62 and 63. There are, I think, enough very good stories that you can imagine Rebellion setting up a chunky collection that skips a few bits. Although perhaps no one would buy them :(

  

15. Scarlet Traces by Ian Edginton and D’Israeli
(Meg Volume 4 issues 16-18)

What was this? This is a technicality, really. It’s only 3 episodes long, and was originally intended to be published on a comics website that went defunct before it really even started – so the creators took it back and managed to find it a home in the Meg.

The cover to the Dark Horse collection of the original series
Art by D'Israeli

What it actually is, is a sequel to HG Wells’ War of the Worlds, and it’s great! My memory of first reading it is that the War of the Worlds connection was a bit of a surprise revealed at the end of the first or maybe even second episode? We’ve been following detective characters in a Victorian/Edwardian London setting, investigating some weird and horrible murders that lead to the discovery that someone has been harnessing power from some trapped – but living -Martians. These are the last survivors of the invasion force from Wells’ novel. I confess I've never read the actual novel, so maybe it was more obvious if you were familiar? Anyway, it came to me as a surprise in 2002, and a fun one!

The art was super detailed, the characters and setting well-fleshed out, and at the time it was kind of a revelation. Looking back on it, it’s kind of a proto-version of the sorts of things Edginton and D’Israeli would go to do with even more sophistication in later collaborations, but I remember this first series very fondly.

The green, neon horrors of seeing too much...
Words by Edginton; Art by D'Israeli

Some years later, the creative team produced a version of War of the Worlds, and a second sequel story set some decades later, both originally published by Dark Horse. Skip another few years ahead, and it then got (and continues to get) long-form series in 2000AD. By now it probably makes more sense to think of the strip as a 2000AD one that had a short outing in the Meg. But, you know, it was in the Meg first, so I’m including it in this ranking!

Weirdly, if it had JUST been that one little 3-parter, I might be inclined to rate it more highly. As part of a bigger series, it’s still excellent, but doesn’t really stick out as the best part of the whole thing, more of a neat if quirky prologue. It’s still, I think, best enjoyed as a short story that turns out to be a sequel to War of the Worlds, rather than reading it AS a direct sequel (which is how its collected nowadays). And it doesn't help that, 20 years on, these sorts of follow-ups to classic works of literature are more commonplace. Scarlet Traces was one of the earlier and better efforts of this genre!

Dreddworld relevance? None.

Writing: 9/10
Art: 9.5/10
Impact: 5/10 The fact it took so long to get a sequel proper I think diminishes the impact of this specific 3-parter, not helped by the way it is now squished into a much bigger series.

Overall score: 23.5/30

Has it been reprinted? It has! I recommend getting Rebellion's Scarlet Traces volume 1 (and then getting Volumes 2 and 3 and demanding more!)

 

14. Lenny Zero by Andy Diggle and Jock
(Vol 3 issue 68; Vol 4 issues 1-2 and 14-15; not counting the longer serial Zero’s 7 from 2000AD)

What was this? The short, snappy, stylish undercover Judge with an attitude series, that, perhaps more than the actual character and story being told, is noteworthy for just feeling like a kick in the balls and a breath of fresh air for the Meg at a time both things were sorely needed.

That Jock knows how to design a page layout.

Partly that’s the glory of Jock’s artwork, with it’s super thin lines and awesome page and panel layouts. And partly it’s just that it was the first new series in ages, after the Meg had been running on reprint fumes and occasional bursts of Armitage, Shimura and Devlin Waugh (aka the few really successful early Meg-originating characters).

Honestly, the three actual Lenny Zero stories we get, and have preserved now in reprint posterity, come across as pretty needy (but excitingly hungry) work from two young comics hopefuls who really like Tarantino. Which, you know, probably describes most Megazine readers circa the late 90s, myself included.

Tarantino is just the most obvious touchpoint, it’s not a superQT homage or anything. But it does do that thing where it really wants you to think the main character – a wire-y, impulsive guy in his mid-late 20s - is both the coolest cat around, and a bit of a loser, but also secretly cleverer than everyone, but also a dickhead (but maybe Diggle/Jock don’t see that he’s a dickhead?).

I dunno. There are plots about double-crossing people, including some judges, and of course because Lenny Z is undercover, he’s allowed to (and does) get into scrapes with women. And there are some future crime/policing gadgets, too, because this IS a Judge Dredd comic.

Ah yes, the Wally Squad Judge who is interested in romantic love. Has its place, I guess.
Words by Diggle; Art by Jock

I basically loved it at the time, then very quickly soured on it, but by that time both creators had moved on, and so it remains as a bright blip in the Meg’s history, and never mind if it’s actually good comics. (It is, but is also smug about it. It’s also maybe only the third-best series about undercover Judges – the premise that just won’t die.)

Dreddworld relevance? It’s about an undercover Judge in Mega City 1! Dredd appears at one point!

Writing: 7/10 Like, it’s well-crafted stuff, but I kind of don’t like it. Diggle would get better at writing likeably unlikeable characters in e.g. The Losers.
Art: 8/10 You can almost see Jock’s lines being scratchy and shaky and getting snappier and zingier with each new episode of this series, very much working out his kinks before hitting comics superstar status. It’s actually endearing to read– you almost feel you could be this good, in a way I cannot ever imagine being as good as Jock is now.
Impact: 9/10 I cannot overstate how exciting it was at the time, and how much that was made clear on letters pages. Lenny Zero has not had a distinguished career, but Diggle and Jock sure have, as indeed has the Megazine itself, starting with the spectacular Volume 4 relaunch. As far as series based around Wally Squad Judges go... well, other creators would do it better, in both Meg and Prog.

Overall score: 24/30

Has it been reprinted? It has! The three Meg stories are all in the Lenny Zero collection (along with some other bits) and also in Mega City Undercover Vol 1. (If you want to read Zero's 7, a years-later longer story from 2000AD - which is plenty fun if not quite as stylish! - it's in Mega City Undercvoer Vol. 3)